Contact Information

Research Interests

My lab group works at the interface of ecology and evolutionary biology. Much of our research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of species' geographic distributions, asking what limits adaptation at the edges of species' ranges, why closely related species vary by orders of magnitude in range size, and how ranges are likely to shift in response to climatic changes. Another line of inquiry focuses on population and community dynamics and mechanisms of species coexistence. These different projects are united by a focus on mechanisms of, and constraints on, niche evolution, and the consequences of divergence in niche properties for patterns of distribution and abundance. We combine experimental manipulations in the field and in the lab and observations of natural populations with tools from quantitative genetics and physiological ecology. Much of our research is on species within the genus Mimulus ("monkeyflowers") because of their ecological diversity, history of study, genomic resources, and ease of propagation.

Angert AL. 2009. “Colloquium Papers: The niche, limits to species’ distributions, and spatiotemporal variation in demography across the elevation ranges of two monkeyflowers.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 19693-19698.